It is not unusual to find sentences that make no sense in articles, but I usually have a good idea about what the meaning was. No such luck here, I don't even know what could have been said to make a journalist write that sequence of words. Any ideas?

"Earth: some bacteria and basic life forms, no sign of intelligent life" (Message from a type III civilization probe sent to the solar system circa 2016)

"David Magerman says he was in his home office in suburban Philadelphia earlier this month when the phone rang. His boss, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was on the line. “I hear you’re going around saying I’m a white supremacist,” Mr. Mercer said. “That’s ridiculous.” In the prior weeks, Mr. Magerman, a registered Democrat who calls himself a centrist, had complained to colleagues about Mr. Mercer’s role as a prominent booster of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

[...]

Mr. Magerman has one idea that would reduce the power of people like Mr. Mercer. He said he was thinking about reaching out to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to craft proposals to reduce speculative trading, which presumably would curtail Renaissance’s profits.

[...]

On Thursday morning, after an online version of this story appeared, Mr. Magerman received a new phone call from Renaissance. A representative told Mr. Magerman that he was being suspended without pay and no longer could have contact with the company."

A couple of thoughts on this, probably have been debated already but I didn't check all the thread pages:

- They get the bulk of the returns from signals that they've been using for many years, hence the Apple-like secrecy. They require a large amount of highly trained staff to come up with new signals to replace the ones that dry out, but I'd estimate signal turnover is extremely low.

- We know that most of the signals do not have an economic/financial meaning, like the widely cited sunny morning effect. However, what is the kind of signals they would look at in the early 80s, and how were they diseminated? The www was 10 years ahead, so they would use a fax/telex or something similar?